The Treasure Trail Part 25

"Others, senor?" asked Isidro.

Rhodes took the letter from his pocket, and perused it as if to refresh his memory.

"The old Spanish chest is to go if possible, and other things of Mrs.

Whitely's," he said. "I will speak of these to your wife if the plan can carry, but there is chance of troops from the south and--who knows?--we may be caught between the two armies and ground as meal on a _metate_."

He thus avoided all detail as to the loads the pack animals were to carry, and the written word was a safe mystery to the Indian. He was making no definite plans, but was learning all possibilities with a mind prepared to take advantage of the most promising.

Thus the late afternoon wore on in apparent restful idleness after the hard trail. The boys secured their little allowance of beans and salt, and corn for planting, but lingered after the good supper of Valencia, a holiday feast compared with their own sketchy culinary performance in the _jacal_ of the far fields. They scanned the trail towards Palomitas, and then the way down the far western valley, evidently loath to leave until their friend Clodomiro should arrive, and Isidro expected him before sunset.

But he came later from towards Soledad, a tall lad with fluttering ribbands of pink and green from his banda and his elbows, and a girdle of yellow fluttering fringed ends to the breeze,--all the frank insignia of a youth in the market for marriage. He suggested a gay graceful bird as he rode rapidly in the long lope of the range. His boy friends of the planted fields went out to meet him at the corral, and look after his horse while he went in to supper. He halted to greet them, and then walked soberly across the plaza where pepper trees and great white alisos trailed dusk shadows in the early starlight.

"What _reata_ held you?" asked Isidro. "Has Soledad grown a place for comrades.h.i.+p?"

"No, senor," said the lad pa.s.sing into the dining room where two candles gave him light in the old adobe room, "it is comrades.h.i.+p we do not need, but it is coming to us."

He seated himself on the wooden bench and his grandmother helped him from a smoking plate of venison. He looked tired and troubled, and he had not even taken note that a stranger was beside Isidro in the shadows.

"What nettle stings you, boy?" asked his grandfather sarcastically, and at that he looked up and rose to his feet at sight of Rhodes.

"Your pardon, senor, I stumbled past like a bat blind in the light,"

he muttered, and as he met Kit's eyes and recognized him his face lit up and his white teeth gleamed in a smile.

"The saints are in it that you are here again, senor!" he exclaimed, "and you came on this day when most needed."

"Eat and then tell your meaning," said Isidro, but Clodomiro glanced toward the kitchen, and then listened for the other boys. They were laughing down at the corral. Clodomiro's horse had thrown one of them.

"With your permission, grandfather, talk first," he said and the two men moved to the bench opposite, leaning over towards him as his voice was lowered.

"Today Marto Cavayso sent for me, he is foreman over there, and strange things are going forward. He has heard that General Rotil stripped Mesa Blanca and that all white people are gone from it. He wants this house and will pay us well to open the door. It is for the woman. They have played a game for her, and he has won, but she is a wild woman when he goes near her, and his plan is to steal her out at night and hide her from the others. So he wants this house. He offered me a good gun. He offers us the protection of Don Jose Perez."

"But--why--that is not credible," protested Kit. "He could not count on protection from Perez if he stole the woman whom many call Senora Perez, for that is what they did call Dona Jocasta in Hermosillo."

"Maybe so," a.s.sented Clodomiro stolidly, "but now he is to be the _esposo_ of a Dona Dolores who is the child of General Terain, so Marto says. Well, this Dona Jocasta has done some killing, and Don Jose does not give her to prison. He sends her to the desert that she brings him no disgrace; and if another man takes her or sinks her in the quicksands then that man will be helping Don Jose. That is how it is. Marto says the woman has bewitched him, and he is crazy about her.

Some of the other men, will take her, if not him."

Kit exchanged a long look with the old Indian.

"The house is yours, senor," said Isidro. "By the word of Senor Whitely, you are manager of Mesa Blanca."

"Many thanks," replied Kit, and sat with his elbows on the table and his hands over his eyes, thinking--thinking of the task he had set himself in Sonora, and the new turn of the wheel of fortune.

"You say the lady is a prisoner?" he asked.

"Sure," returned Clodomiro promptly. "She broke loose coming through a little pueblo and ran to the church. She found the priest and told him things, so they also take that priest! If they let him go he will talk, and Don Jose wanting no talk now of this woman. That priest is well cared for, but not let go away. After awhile, maybe so."

"She is bright, and her father was a priest," mused Kit. "So there is three chances out of four that she can read and write,--a little anyway. Could you get a letter to her?"

"Elena could."

Kit got up, took one of the candles from the table and walked through the rooms surrounding the patio. Some of them had wooden bars in the windows, but others had iron grating, and he examined these carefully.

"There are two rooms fit for perfectly good jails," he decided, "so I vote we give this bewitched Don Marto the open door. How many guns can we muster?"

"He promised to give me one, and ammunition."

"Well, you get it! Get two if you can, but at least get plenty of ammunition. Isidro, will your wife be brave and willing to help?"

The old Indian nodded his head vigorously and smiled. Evidently only a stranger would ask if his Valencia could be brave!

The two brothers came in, and conversation was more guarded until Clodomiro had finished his supper, and gone a little ways home with them to repay them the long wait for comrades.h.i.+p.

When he came back Kit had his plans fairly settled, and had a brief note written to Senora Jocasta Perez, as follows:

HONORED SEnORA:

One chance of safety is yours. Let yourself be persuaded to leave Soledad with Marto. You will be rescued from him by

AN AMERICAN.

"I reckon that will do the trick," decided Kit. "I feel like a blooming Robin Hood without the merry men,--but the Indians will play safe, even if they are not merry. When can you get this to Elena?"

"In time of breakfast," said Clodomiro promptly. "I go tonight, and tomorrow night he steals that woman. Maybe Elena helps."

"You take Elena a present from me to encourage that help," suggested Kit, and he poured a little of the gold from his belt on the paper.

"Also there is the same for you when the lady comes safe. It is best that you make willing offer of your service in all ways so that he calls on none of his own men for help."

"As you say, senor," a.s.sented Clodomiro, "and that will march well with his desires, for to keep the others from knowing is the princ.i.p.al thing. She has beauty like a lily in the shade."

"He tells you that?" asked Kit quizzically, but the boy shook his head.

"My own eyes looked on her. She is truly of the beauty of the holy pictures of the saints in the chapel, but Marto says she is a witch, and has him enchanted;--also that evil is very strong in her. I do not know."

"Well, cross your fingers and tackle the job," suggested Kit. "Get what sleep you can, for you may not get much tomorrow night. It is the work of a brave man you are going to do, and your pay will be a man's pay."

The eyes of the Indian boy glowed with pleasure.

"At your service, senor. I will do this thing or I will not see Mesa Blanca again."

Kit looked after Clodomiro and rolled another cigarette before turning in to sleep.

"When all's said and done, I may be the chief goat of this dame adventure," he told himself in derision. "Maybe my own fingers need crossing."

CHAPTER XIII